iPullRank Webinar - Navigating Black Friday in COVID-19

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Mike King, Founder and Managing Director, iPullRank
NavigatingBlackFridayinCOVID-19
Michael King - Founder / Managing Director at iPullRank
An artist and a technologist, all rolled into one, Michael King recently founded
boutique digital marketing agency, iPullRank. Mike consults with companies all
over the world, including brands ranging from SAP, American Express, HSBC,
SanDisk, General Mills, and FTD, to a laundry list of promising startups and small
businesses.
Mike has held previous roles as Marketing Director, Developer, and tactical SEO
at multinational agencies such as Publicis Modem and Razorfish. Effortlessly
leaning on his background as an independent hip-hop musician, Mike King is a
dynamic speaker who is called upon to contribute to conferences and blogs all
over the world.

33
Mike King, Founder and Managing Director, iPullRank
Raj Nijjer - VP, Marketing at Yotpo
Raj is the VP of Marketing for Yotpo, a leading commerce marketing cloud
based in New York. Yotpo’s solutions for user-generated content (UGC), loyalty,
and referrals help brands accelerate growth by enabling advocacy and
maximizing customer lifetime value.
Prior to joining Yotpo, Raj spent over three years at Yext in multiple leadership
roles through its IPO in 2017. Raj also spent nine years at Godaddy in leadership
roles launching innovative product lines with over nine patents issued and
leading to a buyout, inclusive of an eventual IPO. Raj's experience spans Fortune
500 companies and received his Bachelors of Science degree in International
Management and his MBA from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona
State University. In his free time, Raj is an avid angel investor and advisor to
startups.

4
Agenda
● What will Black Friday Look Like
in COVID-19?
● Who Will Dominate?
● What Preparations Should You
Take?
● The Landscape of Future Black
Fridays

5
What will Black Friday Look Like in COVID-19?

66
Starting Earlier. . . and Earlier
Black Friday has moved from stores opening early Friday morning, to on Thanksgiving. Walmart for example opened
11 hours earlier in 2018 compared to 2007. But this will be different in 2020.
2007
5am Black Friday
2012
10 pm Thanksgiving
2018
6pm Thanksgiving

77
Stores are not opening physical locations on Thanksgiving
Black Friday has bled into Thanksgiving, but these major retailers have announced they won’t do this in 2020. Some
are still considering opening locations for Black Friday, however.

88
Dealing with Crowds
Even on Black Friday, stores are going to be presented with a whole new challenge: social distancing on the busiest
shopping day.

99
Black Friday Popularity
After years of steady growth in popularity, Black Friday saw a slight dip last year for the first time since the 2010
holiday shopping season. With the pandemic, we can assume that more customers will be looking at online deals
rather than shopping in stores.

1010
Cyber Monday
Despite a slight drop last year, Cyber Monday has caused a debate in the past decade over which is better, Black
Friday or Cyber Monday

11
“
AND THEY’RE NOT ALONE
We have a very strong game plan about how we’re going to keep this trend of digital going. But when you
think about Black Friday, if you think about the 10 days before Christmas, what does that mean in terms
of traffic if people are nervous about gathering with crowds? Everything is on the table right now.
- Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette

1212
Example of Successful Enterprise SEO Brands
Source: Adobe Analytics, December 2019
But this actually is a trend. Cyber Monday brought in nearly $2 billion more than Black Friday in ecommerce sales in
2019. Social distancing, stores starting later, and Cyber Monday deals could impact Black Friday sales overall.
Cyber Monday vs Black Friday Ecommerce 2019

1313
Online Shopping Trends
In fact, COVID-19 trends show something similar. Online shopping saw more popularity during the early days of stay-
at-home orders than it did Black Friday/Cyber Monday in 2019. Even now we can see similar levels of popularity
compared to these sales days last year.

1414
So will Cyber Monday dethrone Black Friday in 2020?

1515
Or will sales start even earlier?
While ecommerce might rise on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, some brands have announced they will
start their sales season even earlier to combat brick and mortar loses. Target, for example, is starting their sales in
October.

1616
It’s 2020, you need to be mobile friendly already
You’ve been saying this for years so if your site is still not mobile friendly, you have probably been losing a lot of
customers in the past, but this might the year it ends you.

1717
Addressing Unemployment. . .
Millions are still out of work. Black
Friday has thrived in the past decade
because of a strong economy and
consumers having money to spend,
but in 2008, total sales declined by
more than $24 billion and didn’t
recover until 2010.
Year Spent per Shopper Total Spent (Online and In store) % Change
2005 $734.69 $496.2 billion 6.2%
2006 $750.70 $512.6 billion 3.2%
2007 $755.13 $525.9 billion 2.7%
2008 $694.19 $501.7 billion -4.6%
2009 $681.83 $503.2 billion 0.2%
2010 $718.98 $529.4 billion 5.2%
2011 $740.57 $553.8 billion 4.6%
2012 $752.24 $568.7 billion 2.6%
2013 $767.24 $584.1 billion 2.9%
2014 $802.45 $608.0 billion 5.0%
2015 $805.65 $626.1 billion 3.2%
2016 $935.58 $655.8 billion 3.6%
2017 $967.13 $682.0 billion 4.0%

1818
Shopify is Seeing Black Friday levels Daily
But even with unemployment rising, Shopify has reported Black Friday type levels of traffic everyday
during COVID-19. So while some predictions have online shopping decreasing, trends so far this year
tell a different story and smaller ecommerce stores should prepare to take advantage.

1919
Predicted ecommerce decrease
You can expect a decline across the board, not just brick and mortar sales, as a result of the economic
woes. BlackFriday.com predicts that after online sales increasing significantly the past few years, we
could see a 7.5% decrease in 2020
Day Online spending totals
Thanksgiving + Black Fri. 2016 $5.27 billion (17.7% increase YoY)
Thanksgiving + Black Fri. 2017 $7.9 billion (49% increase YoY
Thanksgiving + Black Fri. 2018 $9.9 billion (25% increase YoY)
Thanksgiving + Black Fri. 2019 $11.9 billion (20% increase YoY)
Thanksgiving + Black Friday
2020 (predicted)
$11 billion (-7.5% decrease YoY)

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Who Will Dominate?

2121
Amazon has continued to grow in terms of the
percentage of ecommerce companies in the US, but
more impressive is their revenue growth from $156
billion in 2017, to more than $260 billion now.

2222
While Amazon receives the most traffic, ecommerce sites have all seen considerable growth through 2020.
Even smaller niche sites have potential to carve out a fair amount of traffic.

2323
It’s not necessarily Black Friday or Cyber Monday that should help Amazon win, but they pushed Amazon Prime Day
back to October this year. With other brands expanding beyond the typical week long sales push, Amazon has
positioned themselves well.
Amazon Prime Day sales

2424
Aside from Amazon, Shopify stores have been major winners during COVID-19 with a 47% increase in Q1 2020 vs Q1
2019 and retailers managed to replace 94% of their brick and mortar sales with online during this period.

2626
ebay started off 2020 a bit rough with a decrease in revenue compared to the previous quarter (Q4 2019) but Q2 of
2020 jumped to levels the company hasn’t seen since Q4 2018.

2727
Etsy is another large ecommerce site that has seen tremendous growth during COVID-19. One thing that helped fuel
their success was an increase in facemask sales as a result of COVID-19.

2828
While many companies that rely on brick and mortar locations have been hit heavily by lockdown orders, Target was
able to stand out by focusing on their ecommerce site and same-store pick up. They have positioned themselves
well for the holiday season.

2929
Same day services were up by 278%, with Shipt leading the way with 300% growth in Q1 2020 alone.

3030
Since PayPal is one of the most popular forms of payment online, they have seen considerable growth in visits as
well going from 427.5m in February to 565.2m in July.

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What Preparations Should You Take?
Let’s focus on the positives

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Keep the COVID-19 Response
Front and Center
People want to know how your e-
commerce company is keeping them safe.
Continue to generate content about how
you’re responding to the COVID-19 and
keep it front and center.

3333
Start planning early
Ideally, you’d have started preparing for Black Friday months ago. Especially with brands focusing more attention to
ecommerce and curbside pickup, online competition is going to be fierce this year. https://ipullrank.com/its-too-late-
for-black-friday-seo/

34
“
STOP KILLING YOUR LINK EQUITY
Once the sale is over, those Black Friday pages are
taken down. Every year you're building a lot of link equity
up and starting over again.

3535
Keep Black Friday Pages Live
This is a page from Walmart’s 2019 Black Friday sale. They updated the on page copy to show that even though
Black Friday 2019 has passed, you can still find great deals on their site, and kept the link equity they’ve built.

3636
This Page Ranks #2 for [Black Friday Deals]
Best Buy did the same thing and kept their 2019 Black Friday page live to leverage the link equity it built, while also
giving customers information about Black Friday 2020, and the ability to sign up for daily deals.

3737
Create seasonal content
Seasonal content for Black Friday, like this Holiday Entertaining Guide from Williams Sonoma, will help drive traffic
to your site every year especially if you provide yearly updates to lists like these. They can also be great natural link
building material.

3838
Highlight reviews
According to a Search Engine Journal study based on Google data from last December, customers reviews were one
of the factors that influenced buyers the most, up there with price, shipping, and sales/discounts/promos.

3939
98%
of consumers consider authentic
customer reviews to be the most
influential factor in purchase
decisions
.
Source: Yotpo Data Labs
77%
of consumers said that authentic
customer photos affect their
purchase decisions more than
professional photos.

4040
98%
of consumers consider authentic
customer reviews to be the most
influential factor in purchase
decisions
.
77%
of consumers said that authentic
customer photos affect their
purchase decisions more than
professional photos.

42
Discovery - Stand out on search
With Yotpo's Google partnership, easily
integrate product and merchant ratings
into ads and organic search results.
Google Seller Ratings
+17% avg. uplift in CTR
Rich Snippets & SEO
Product Listings Ads

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Onsite - Boost CVR with smart
widgets
Give shoppers insight into past
customers’ opinions and help them find
specific info about key topics such as
shoe fit.
• AI-powered Topic Filters and
Custom Filters help shoppers find
answers, fast
• Free-text search functionality
• Amplified by customer photos and
videos
• Customize widgets to be perfectly
on-brand
• 166% average uplift in on-site CVR

4646
Make sure your products are available!
That same study showed that product availability was another influential factor, which makes sense. Around the
holiday season, customers expect products to be available and need them on time for gifts. Toilet paper brands had
a big problem with this back in March.

4747
Out of stock products can serve Soft 404s
With soft 404’s you are essentially telling users the page no longer exists but telling Search Engines it does exist.
Some CMS’s do this dynamically, confusing both users and Search Engines alike and causing these pages to not be
indexed.

4848
Page and Domain Acquisition and 301 Redirection is the Only Viable Last
Minute Tactic
For newer sites with little link equity, acquiring existing domains and redirecting them to your store will help increase
your chances of ranking well in Organic Search.

49
“
Do not underestimate the power of technical SEO going
into the holiday season.

5050
The Value of Technical SEO for E-commerce Has Not Changed
Taking the time to optimize the technical aspects of your site will also pay dividends. Focus on fixing broken internal
and external links, improving page load speed, and ensuring your site is mobile friendly should be prioritized.

5151
Generate Category Level Copy with GPT-2/3
With GPT-2 or GPT-3 you can create content on a scalable level using tools like Inferkit.com. Simply type in a few
sentences and the AI will write the rest for you. This is especially relevant when creating content for category pages.

52
Check Out My Post on SEJ About
This
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ge
nerate-data-driven-copy-ecommerce-
category-pages-gpt-2/375277/#close

5353
Smaller Sites Need to Focus on the Long Tail
Things get hypercompetitive around this time of year. If you haven’t already ramped up your link acquisition efforts,
you’ll need to focus on the longer tail keywords to drive sales during this time.

5454
Optimize Content Using Topical Clusters
Your keywords have keywords and topical clusters reinforce the relevance of sections of the site. As you optimize
your content you should build out topical clusters to comprehensively rank for your keyword set.

55
Use PAA to Drive the Clusters
Use a tool like SERPApi to identify the
People Also Ask questions related to your
core keywords and create content around
them.

5656
Use Tools to Better Optimize Content
Your keywords have keywords and there are lot of tools out there that will allow you to optimize accordingly.
SEMRush Writing Assistant, SearchMetrics Content Experience, Ryte Content Success, Frase Content Optimizer and
MarketMuse.

57
The Internal Linking Structure is
One of the Most Valuable Things
to Optimize
For large sites, you need to take good care
of the internal linking structure.
Check out @kevin_indig’s definitive guide
to optimization of internal links
https://www.kevin-indig.com/internal-
linking-the-full-guide-to-internal-link-
axioms/

5858
Highlight sales even more
Black Friday has always been about the sales, promos and deals, but consumers are looking at this even more than
ever due to the economy.

5959
Spend money on paid campaigns
Paid campaigns have been incredibly advantageous during COVID-19, but running paid campaigns during the holiday
season has also proven effective.

6060
Spend money on paid campaigns: Facebook
But it is important to plan these campaigns in advance is essential with higher CPM during Black Friday and Cyber
Monday, but lower after Christmas.

6161
Spend money on paid campaigns: Paid Search
Paid Search CPC stayed relatively the same through all of 2019, but the severe drop in spend and CPC in 2020
shows that this channel could show a great ROI during Black Friday 2020.

62
The Landscape of Future Black Fridays

6363
Expect more growth online
Ecommerce sales are projected to
continue to increase the next two years
up to nearly $860 billion, with 2020 being
the highest increase since 2008.

6464
10 Years of Growth in 3 Months
In the past three months, we’ve seen 10
years worth of growth due to the
pandemic.

6565
User behavior has changed
Our survey back in April provided some insight into how users are expecting their behaviors to change even once
COVID-19 has passed, with the majority of respondents saying they’ve developed behaviors that will become
permanent.

6666
This is especially true with younger generations who said that they would likely buy essential goods online even once
stores reopen.

6767
Most People are Expecting Permanent
Change toward E-commerce
In the US, most categories people expect
to continue to make their purchases
online post-COVID-19 when they
previously did not.

6868
People want to be able to order online or
on an app and either have it delivered
quickly, or have the option to pick it up
from the store and limit their time in large
groups.

6969
We’ve seen changes before
The 2008 recession caused changes to how consumers shopped for food with discount stores and store
brands increasing in popularity. With ecommerce dominating the 2010’s, it’s not outlandish to assume a similar
trend now.

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Questions! You ask, We answer

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Thank You!
Twitter: @iPullRank
Email: mike@ipullrank.com
Website: https://ipullrank.com
Get in touch if you need some help!
Raj Nijjer
VP of Brand Marketing
at Yotpo
Mike King
Founder and Managing Director
at iPullRank

iPullRank Webinar - Navigating Black Friday in COVID-19

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